Rekindling That Flame
by Eura Gaia
Summary: A series of one-shots about Liesel's life after war. Rated T to be sure.
1. Himmel Street Fights

Liesel opened the door to Max's bedroom, careful not to wake him. Alex Steiner has let them stay in his house, and she was staying in Rudy's room. She left in the middle of the night, woken up by the same horrific nightmare—her brother on the train, lifeless, looking at the floor, her mother unconscious, and she saw herself shaking both of them awake, but in the end they left her—but this time, Hans, Rosa, and Rudy were there.

Memories linger inside Rudy's room; the candle marks on the floor, the creakiness of the bed when you set foot on it, the pencil marks on the walls. It was all too lively for Liesel—but, oh, _Hans _was the one. He was the one she missed. Day and night she talked to him. Day and night she reminisced about their memories; his soft, silver eyes watching her from the corner of the room, his accordion-playing hands smoothly piping out the keys, his gentle laughter when he made a mistake. All of him she missed. She loves him. More than anything in the world.

The only person that she has right now is Max. Or maybe even Alex Steiner.

Dim light pours from the kerosene lamp in a bedside drawer, next to the broken Max Vandenburg.

His swampy eyes were squeezed shut, away from reality and madness and war. His feathery hair has been overgrown; strewn all over his head. His posture was bad, and he was even thinner than before. His beard started growing, curling around his chin like a snake.

And oh, _oh poor Liesel Meminger._

She had to watch it all. All the deaths and all the gruesomeness and all the destruction. I stood next to her that day, when she was talking to Rosa and Hans Hubermann. It killed me. She killed me. She trampled over my emotions; she broke me.

On the contrary, how can you kill Death himself? Easy. You show him life. You show him how life is beautiful and destructive and innocent and greedy and _worth it. _I already know that my job is horrible. No one would want this. I'm stuck with it. My spherical heart will circle on forever, and I can see an eternity of death in front of me. Busy days and busy lives. Human pendulums who ran out of the will to live, or were forced to stop.

"Max?" Liesel whispered, inching closer to the small, makeshift bed.

No answer.

"Max?" she asked again, sitting down cross-legged next to his bed, her body touching the cold, marble floor.

"The sky today was gray." She began. "The clouds were stretched on until I couldn't see them anymore. I looked closely, and I saw blood stains on the clouds, from the deaths. From Mama and Papa, from your family, from Rudy, from the Holtzapfels, from Pfikkus, from everyone."

Max had began to snore, his malnourished stomach rising in and out slowly, carefully, as if he was afraid to breathe, afraid to live. And maybe he was. He was waiting for me. He was still dreaming about beating the Führer, but his dreams mixed with reality. Hitler defeated him with a final blow. Nazi Germany cheers on, but there is one person who doesn't cheer. She's on the bleachers of the stadium, her look dark and grim. Her blond hair was scruffy. Her clothes were beaten. She was the epitome of defeat.

It was Liesel Meminger, staring him down. His vision blurred, blood destroying his sight. She urged him on with her thoughts and her determined look. Her look chanted _"Come on, Max. Come on, come on, come on. Stand up. Fight. Do something!"_

"Max!" her voice booms, and he struggled to decide whether he was still dreaming. He was not.

He sits upright, squinting in the midnight light. She tackled him with a hug, her crystal tears spreading all over his battered shirt.

_"I miss Papa," _she says through thick tears and swollen eyes. Max nodded grimly. And, in the kerosene lamp of the basement of Alex Steiner's house, a German girl made of broken words and a defeated Jewish fist-fighter held each other in their wary arms, recovering lost memories, and creating new ones.


	2. Moonlit Conversations

"Papa?"

A tentative glance around her surroundings.

A sudden creak of the door.

A girl turning her body to face the silhouetted someone just standing by the doorstep.

"I miss him too," was the reply of the figure.

The girl sighed, sitting down on the floor and looking out into the sky through her little bedroom window. Moonlight shined upon the two, encasing their pale skin in glowing light. The girl had a book—_The Time Traveler _by H.G. Wells—with her, and she clutched it tight to her chest, as close to her heart as possible, as if the words can just simply leak through the pages and inject themselves into her bloodstream.

"Where do you think he is now?" Max asked, sitting down beside the girl. He brought with him a blanket, and now he wrapped them around their shoulders.

Liesel Meminger has never thought much about the afterlife. Papa told her what he had learned about it during his childhood back then, but she hadn't paid much attention. She supposed that her papa, Hans Hubermann, was now in nothingness. There was something glorious about it, not existing yet still being _there_, somehow. She supposed he was now in a black room, and that he was now nothing more but a memory, feeding on Liesel's own love for him. It was devastating to think about, but, nevertheless, the girl told Max Vandenburg about it.

He nodded his approval. Liesel looked up and saw the faint sketches of sleep around his eyes, and that his hair had started to look more like feathers again, rather than rough, scrawny twigs.

The crickets sung in the midnight air, and Liesel shivered.

"I like to think that he will be reincarnated." Max whispered. Liesel tilted her head to one side. Again, she had never thought much about these things, but she decided that a reincarnated papa was better than nothing. Yes, she liked that idea very much.

"As who, do you think?" was her query.

Max shrugged, shoulder blades rising and then sagging, feathery hair flying. "Maybe as a little boy. Or a girl. It does not matter, really. Whoever he is to become depends much more on what you want him to be."

Liesel looked up once again, her big brown eyes gleaming in the moonlight. Her expression was confused. Max noticed this at once, and the Jew explained further.

"What I mean is, whether he is to be reincarnated or not, his future, if he has any in _your _world, Liesel—" Liesel could not help it: she laughed. A quiet yet somehow uproarious laughter that echoed across the moonlit streets—"You keep him in your heart, yes? Maybe that's where he is now. A better place than a blank black room, certainly?"

Crickets sung their one-note song, birds fluttered their wings discreetly, a few cars strolled along, flicking their headlights on and off, and a few splotches of sunlight peeked its way through the curtains of darkness. Liesel smiled. _Wherever papa is right now, _she thought, smiling at the silhouetted houses, _I'll be here, waiting for him to come back._


End file.
